The Cowboy's Claim. Carla Cassidy

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The worst part was he had a dreadful feeling this was just the beginning, that things were going to get crazier before they got better. He’d better prepare himself for more surprises that lie ahead.

      * * *

      Courtney Chambers placed Nick’s order with Rusty the cook and then sank down in a chair in the kitchen area, her legs shaking so hard she might never walk again.

      She should have expected that he’d eventually come back home, especially after Sam and Adam’s recurrent plunge into despair. And she should have expected that if he did come back to Grady Gulch, he’d eventually make his way back into the Cowboy Café.

      But she hadn’t been expecting it to be today, and in the very depths of her heart she’d hoped she’d never see him again. Just looking into the brightness of his blue eyes had brought back all the heartbreak, all the anguish he’d left behind when he’d disappeared from Grady Gulch without a word on the day that his sister had been buried.

      She’d loved him as she’d never loved another man, had given herself to him and only him with the notion that eventually they’d get married and raise a family together. And then he’d disappeared and she’d never heard from him again.

      She straightened in her chair as Mary touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?” Mary looked at her worriedly.

      “I’m fine,” Courtney said with forced reassurance. The last thing she wanted to do was bother her boss, the woman who had been equal parts employer and surrogate mother to her for the past two years.

      “Are you sure?” Mary raised a pale blond eyebrow.

      “I’m good. Just resting my feet for a minute or two while Rusty gets my order ready,” she replied, knowing that it was very rare she simply sat to wait for an order.

      Mary eyed her skeptically for a long moment and then nodded and moved back to where she had been working with Junior. Courtney sighed in relief. She didn’t want to lie to Mary, who had been so good to her, but she also didn’t want anyone to know how badly seeing Nick again had affected her. She’d thought she was emotionally dead where he was concerned, but she was apparently wrong.

      “Order up,” Rusty said, and Courtney reluctantly got to her feet, knowing she’d have to look at him again. She filled a big glass with milk and then grabbed the plate from the pass window and headed back to the booth where Nick sat.

      Why hadn’t he gotten obese in the two years since she’d last seen him? Why hadn’t he grown a beer belly and jowls? Why hadn’t that charming cleft in his chin fallen off his handsome face? Or his broad shoulders turned to toothpicks?

      Why, oh why, after everything that had happened, did her heart still lurch more than a little bit at the sight of his thick dark hair, his chiseled features and those amazing blue eyes?

      She was so over him. She’d moved on, and he had no place in her heart, in her life. He deserved nothing from her but the plate of food she slid down in front of him along with the glass of milk and the edge of contempt that welled up inside her.

      She started to leave the table but gasped in surprise as he grabbed her by the wrist to stop her escape. “It isn’t that busy,” he said. “Why don’t you sit with me for a minute or two?”

      “Why would I want to do that?” she replied as she pulled her wrist from his grasp. Her need to escape was overwhelming, but she didn’t want him to see that he bothered her in any way, that he still had any power at all over her.

      “I don’t know. I thought maybe we could catch up a little bit.”

      “Why?” She forced a light laugh. “I mean honestly, Nick, what on earth would we have to talk about? You’ve been gone for two years. We’ve both moved on with our lives.”

      He studied her intently, and she kept her features carefully schooled so as not to display any of the turmoil that twirled around in her stomach. “I should have called you,” he finally said.

      Her stomach clenched. “Yes, you should have,” she agreed. “But, you didn’t, and time went by and life went on. It’s all water under the bridge. Now, is there anything else I can get for you?”

      “Not at the moment,” he replied after a long hesitation.

      She turned and left the booth, but she was aware of his gaze lingering on her, heating the center of her back. She escaped back to the safety of the kitchen and once again pasted a smile on her lips.

      Instead of keeping Nick Benson in her mind, she thought of Grant Hubert, the man she’d been dating for the past two months.

      Grant was everything Nick hadn’t been...dependable and mature. He was thirty-five, the vice president of the local bank, and he’d been the first man she’d allowed into her life in any way since Nick.

      Grant didn’t stir in her the same crazy emotions that Nick had once evoked. Instead he felt solid and predictable, and that was exactly what she needed in her life at this moment.

      She knew what had brought Nick back to town, but the Bensons weren’t the only ones who had gone through trauma in the past couple of months.

      Certainly everyone had been shocked when Sam Benson had tried to kill Courtney’s friend and fellow waitress, Lizzy Wiles, but before that the entire town had been equally shocked when another waitress from the café had been brutally murdered.

      That murder had not yet been solved and hadn’t been related to Sam’s attack on Lizzy. At the time, Courtney, Lizzy and Candy, the murdered young woman, had been living in three of the four little cottages just behind the café.

      It had been Candy’s murder and the attack on Lizzy that had prompted Sheriff Cameron Evans to arrange for Courtney to move from the cottage to a nearby motel. In the past two months the motel room, with its kitchenette, had finally begun to feel like home.

      Thankfully, when she returned to the booth where Nick had sat enough money to pay his tab and a generous tip for her was all that remained.

      She rang up his order, pocketed her tip and told herself she absolutely refused to spend another minute of her time thinking about Nick Benson. Besides, there was plenty to do to prepare for the evening dinner rush. That would keep her mind sufficiently occupied.

      Since the time she’d moved to Grady Gulch, she’d come to love the people of the small town. Even George Wilton, who complained about the bitterness of the coffee, the dryness of the meat loaf and the laziness of today’s youth, held a certain charm all his own.

      The dinner rush that evening seemed busier than usual, and despite her desire not to think about Nick Benson, he seemed to be the topic of conversation on everyone’s lips.

      “They’ve all come to bad ends,” Susan Walker said to her husband as Courtney served them the nightly special. “One dead, one a convict, one a drunk, and Nick always was a bit of a hellion.” She shook her head ruefully. “Guess that’s what happens to kids when their parents die too young.”

      “All of them spent too much time down at The Corral,” David Bentz said to his wife as Courtney delivered their drinks to their table. “I heard through the grapevine that Nick has come back to somehow save Adam from himself.” David snorted. “That’s kind of like the pot calling the kettle to ask СКАЧАТЬ